


The Great Equalizer

by MisterMaf



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Cold War, Espionage, F/F, Nuclear Weapons, Post-War, Post-World War II, Slow Burn, Soviet Spies AU, Soviet Union, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 20:18:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11192673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisterMaf/pseuds/MisterMaf
Summary: In the late 1940s, the United States began refining its complicated nuclear technology for use by the everyday soldier. The Soviet Union, woefully behind in its nuclear program, sought to surpass its new global rival's growing arsenal of the weapon to end all wars — through any means necessary. This is the story of one resourceful Soviet pilot, coerced by the MGB secret police for her actions during the war, and a traitorous American physicist with a conscience, on their undercover mission to level the international playing field.This story is based on Tumblr user Roman (romans-art.tumblr.com)'s Soviet Spies AU for Steven Universe, featuring Lapis Lazuli and Peridot as an undercover duo experiencing the "slowest slow burn in slow burn history."More info and content can be found in the creator's masterpost here:http://romans-art.tumblr.com/post/150616433414/lapidot-soviet-spies-au-masterpostI plan to generally stay away from NSFW stuff but rest assured there's plenty available there to fill in the gaps if that's your thing.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This work is subject to retroactive revisions and refinements as I seek to improve both the quality of the content and its cohesion as a story arc. I also have several more chapters already written (which I'm pretty excited to share, especially Lapis backstory), but not the chapters that bridge them together, so stay tuned.

**1947  
** **Outside Santa Fe, New Mexico**

The machine clicked and the whirring stopped as the punch paper tape reel finished processing. She reached up and quickly opened the compartment the tape had loosely re-coiled up inside, carefully avoiding tangle and tear as she detached it from the reader and set it down on the countertop behind her. Shelves tangled with wires and relays lined the walls, bulky teletype terminals scattered about. She was about to reach into to her open leather satchel at her feet when the unexpected sound of an opening door instead sent her spinning on her heels with what could accurately be described as a yelp.

Two men with ties, button-down shirts, and raised eyebrows stared at her from the doorway on the opposite wall, their conversation interrupted by her sudden jump.

“Oh, hey Frances. Didn’t mean to sneak up on ya. What are you up to over there?” one of the men said as they stepped into the room.

“Oh, um — don’t worry about it, guys,” Frances stammered as she waved to them with the back of her hand. She hoped her smile didn't look too forced. “Just taking a look at CAPMAC. She’s on the fritz and Schultz asked me to check it out.”

“I can help you take a look, if you want,” the first man offered as he casually started walking around the counter between them. “I know this thing inside and out.”

“N-no, I’ve got it. I used this thing a lot back before I left,” she declined, silently cursing her nerves to settle down. “I’m pretty sure I’ve almost got it.

He leaned on the corner of the counter with his elbow. The man was standing just next to her now, scanning the massive computer’s various tape enclosures. If he glanced down for even a moment just now—! Frances swallowed as she leaned forward on the countertop herself and used her foot to subtly slide her open satchel forwards, positioning her body between the device within and the man standing one foot away from her being made. She could practically hear her heartbeat — it felt about to pound its way out of her chest at any moment.

“Are you sure? It’s not a big—”

“Come on, Joe,” the other man cut in. “If she says she’s got it, she’s got it. We got stuff to do.”

Joe's wandering eyes soon settled on the coiled paper tape sitting innocently on the countertop. Frances' entire body at once became as tense as Thanksgiving dinner with her mother. She could feel her fingers and toes clenched together and wrestled the urge to loosen her slack tie even further. The man blinked.

_...This is it._

 

...

 

...

 

“Yeah, you’re right, let’s get going,” he finally relented with a nod and turned around. The two men started heading towards another door on the other side of the room together. “Good luck with that thing, Frances. It bites sometimes,” he said with a grin, and resumed his conversation about some kind of switch that was evidently too complex.

“Oh, by the way, that tape—” he interrupted himself as he reached the door, and turned back around to point in her direction.

Her heart skipped a beat. Frances raised her eyebrows and forced another smile. “Hm?”

“Make sure you get it back in soon, okay? We’re running another test later,” Joe said.

“Oh — yeah, sure thing,” she replied with a thumbs up. The knuckles on her other clenched hand were probably turning white by now. The nerves in her wrist strained against the tension — but she kept the smile going. “And hey, guys — just call me Peridot, okay?”

“Yeah, sure thing,” Joe copied back, thumbs up included. “See you later, Peridot.”

And with that, they were gone. Peridot dropped her smile and felt a knot in her stomach unravel as she let out a long, relieved sigh. She quietly rushed across the room to close both doors behind them and returned to the tape on the counter.

No sooner had she arrived was she kneeling behind the countertop, pulling out some kind of device from her satchel. It was a narrow grey box, taller than it was wide, with a hatch concealing a compartment and feed for paper tapes on the top. She fitted the coiled up tape she’d just removed from CAPMAC’s data store — one of many lining the wall behind her — and inserted the loose end into the slot in the device. With the press of a red button, the grey box started a slight whirring noise, along with a rapid, not-so-slight _“clackclackclackclackclack”_ as the tape started feeding into the reader.

_It’s okay, the big guy makes this noise all the time. It’s all… it’s all good._

She took a quick breath and stood up to start fiddling with some other paper tape in the open enclosure in case someone else came in. Really, she barely had any idea what half the stuff in this room even did, and it had already undergone some serious upgrades since the last time she poked at it a couple years ago — the computer guys like Joseph had always processed her data for her back then. It probably wasn’t beyond her capacity to figure out now, but there wasn’t exactly time for that presently. Her shoulders tensed as another pair of muffled voices passed by the closed door behind her.

After what must have been a year and then some, the red button popped back up with a click, and the machine stopped whirring. Peridot hastily opened a second compartment next to the first and returned the tape to its place in the wall before closing its glass enclosure. She popped open another panel towards the bottom of the device and peeked inside — sure enough, another paper reel full of punch holes was coiled within. She stuffed the grey box back to her satchel, and was moments later hurrying her way down the hallways, bag slung over her shoulder.

A few twists and turns through the maze of a building later, she paused by an open door and leaned inside. At a large table in the middle of the room sat a short woman with light, fluffy hair that was somehow even messier than her own. Deep brown eyes that perfectly matched her skin tone pored over a jumbled pile of papers and diagrams sprawled before her. Another woman, tall and thin with short red hair and a narrow, pointed nose, was writing out some mathematical theoretical on a chalkboard already covered in more letters than numbers. Most of the walls, actually, were covered in chalky — but exceptionally orderly — math.

“Hey guys, I’m headed out for lunch,” Peridot said. “Be back in a bit.”

“Okay… see you later,” the tall one said in a distant voice as she continued to scribble away on the chalkboard. The other gave a silent thumbs up, and Peridot continued on her way out.

As she was about to round a corner, though, she suddenly found herself in a head-first collision with another woman — supremely tall, and wearing some impressively large hair.

“Hey there, Peridot. Where are you off to in such a hurry?” she asked in her smooth English accent.

“Garnet!” Peridot exclaimed. “I didn’t see you coming — I-I was just on my way out to meet Lapis for lunch.”

Garnet nodded knowingly with that stoic yet disarming air she always had about her.

“Ah, I get it. Can’t wait to see your wife,” she said, peering at her with a wink over her glasses.

“My wi—” Peridot started, before catching herself. _Yes, you dunce. Your wife!_

“My wife! Yes, I’m going out to lunch, with my wife. I’ll… see you later,” she managed — just before she nearly stumbled over her own feet stepping around the larger woman.

Garnet watched Peridot hurry off down the hallway, and shook her head with a bemused chuckle.

“Newlyweds,” she commented to herself with a smile, watching Peridot almost lose her balance again rounding another corner. The door, at last.

Waiting outside in the parking lot was a dark sedan, empty save for one. The engine turned over as Peridot approached and the driver’s side window started to roll down.

“Hi, honey — ready to go?” waved a woman in the front seat. She had fairly short dark hair — about the same length as Peridot’s, but actually brushed once in awhile — and wore a simple blue dress.

“You bet — I’m starving!” Peridot called back, perhaps slightly more cheerful than she was going for. She walked around to the other side of the car and lowered herself into the passenger seat as the driver rolled up the window again.

The passenger door closed. All smiles vanished.

“Did you get it?”


	2. Like the Stone

**January 2, 1947  
** **Somewhere in the northeastern United States  
One day before arrival**

Larissa woke to the sudden shuddering of landing gear trundling over uneven ground. From her back seat view through the tiny plane’s windows, every direction she could see was dull, frozen grass, surrounded on all sides by hibernating forest coated in a thin layer of ice that sparkled with glamour in the rising sun. There wasn’t a single leaf or bundle of pine needles around; the entire area seemed dead, yet at the same time somehow lovely as the forest’s spindly frozen branches gleamed in the morning light.

Up ahead, pointed in their direction, another airplane glimmered much like the trees around it in the low sunlight at the end of the landing strip. This one was considerably larger than the three-seater she had spent the past several days crammed in the back of, sandwiched between a bag of clothes and a bag of gear — this plane idling on the strip was a twin-engine, with a sleek, round silhouette.

As her plane rumbled towards this other craft and the shimmering light bounced off the side at a less blinding angle, she caught a better view of the larger plane. It looked remarkably similar to the cargo carriers the Americans sent to Russia during the war, but this one wore no stars or roundels — U.S., Soviet, or otherwise. Instead, its creamy off-white exterior bore the words “Cardinal Cargo”, with a painted head of a fluffy red bird over a simple compass adorning the tail.

A wide double-door hatch swung open towards the tail on the cargo’s port side, and a ladder folded down as Larissa's three-seater rolled to a halt alongside the larger plane. A short figure in a brown leather jacket appeared in the doorway and descended down the ladder, the same cardinal emblem painted on the back of his jacket with the cursive words “The Cardinal” above and “52d TCW” below. He hopped down the last step of the ladder before turning around to reveal a round, mustachioed face wrapped in a faux fur hat. He waved in their direction as Larissa's own pilot hopped out to open her door and remove some baggage so she could climb out herself. She felt a sudden breath of cold air wash over her as soon as the hatch opened, but the opportunity to finally stretch her legs was welcome nonetheless.

“Welcome to America, friend!” called the other pilot as he approached, more than loud enough to hear over the idling engines. “Captain Burney, at your service!” This man was clearly trueblood American.

Her Russian pilot pulled Larissa's other bag out of the back seat and dropped it on the ground without a word before closing the hatch and climbing back into to his cockpit.

“Friendly fella, inn’t he?” Burney remarked with a raised eyebrow, finally standing in front of her. He reached down to pick up her bags, but Larissa stepped in his way.

“I can get them,” she said, shortly. She’d finally gotten her American accent down — for the most part — but less so on the emotional nuance.

“Suit yourself,” Burney shrugged. “Come on, let’s get you on board.” He turned around to head back to his plane, again revealing the the painted emblem on the back of his bomber jacket.

“Is this the original Cardinal?” she asked, walking just behind him with her things.

“Oh, no — the Cardinal was a troop carrier, not a cargo plane like this one. Lost ’er in Normandy,” he replied over his shoulder. “I was lucky — those boys in the 82nd really bailed me out of that one.”  
  
Larissa scoffed under the hum of the engines as she followed the pilot up the ladder. If only she’d been so fortunate herself.

“I still call this girl ‘Cardinal’, too, though,” he added cheerily.

Larissa wasn’t sure whether he meant “Cardinal, too” or “Cardinal II” — English was such a finicky language.

The inside of Cardinal (II?) was completely bare — not just of cargo, but amenities of any kind. It didn’t even look pressurized. This was definitely left over from the war. The only feature between her and the cockpit was a pair of fold-up seats with harnesses on the wall.

The drone of the engines muffled slightly as Burney closed the doors behind them.

“C’mon, I’ll tie your bags up over here,” he said, pointing a gloved hand towards a rail near the seats. A rope was already knotted around it. “You can sit up front with me. It’s a bit warmer up there.”

She reluctantly released her bags, but watched intently as he tied the rope through their handles before following him into the cockpit.

“You ever been up front in a plane before?” he asked as she settled into the copilot’s seat.

Larissa's relatively neutral expression she’d been wearing until now soured somewhat.

“Yes, I was also a pilot in the war,” she said, passively tapping a nondescript winged pin on the lapel of her coat. “But I did not have any ‘boys in the 82nd’ to rescue me.”

Burney paused in the middle of flipping some switches on the dashboard and looked towards her out of the corner of his eye. She was staring straight ahead. Hard to read, this one. A pause fell over the cockpit for a number of seconds past comfortable.

“Oh — um… I’m sorry,” he apologized at last. He suddenly looked as awkward as he sounded as he searched for the words to say next. Eventually he spoke up again with a more reassuring tone.

“Well hey, I’m glad to finally have a copilot who knows what she’s doing again,” he said. He had a soft smile on his face now. It was almost encouraging.

Larissa glanced back at him and felt the ends of her own lips curl in the direction of a smile, too — a tiny one, almost unnoticeable — but he noticed, and his own widened into a grin as he resumed flipping switches on the dash. She finally decided that Cardinal Cargo was _definitely,_ for sure, not a real (or at the very least legitimate) copilot-less shipping business, but more importantly, she realized that may have been the first actual, genuine compliment she’d received since, well… she couldn’t remember, actually. It was a bit of a bittersweet thought, but a step up nonetheless.

Captain Burney gripped the throttle at his side and slowly pushed it forward with a practiced precision, egging his plane down the airstrip as the droning engines ramped up in pitch. As the Cardinal picked up speed, Larissa noticed gratefully that its heavier airframe lended it a much smoother ride over the bumpy unpaved clearing than the stomach-turning touchdown she’d just had in the smaller plane, which had long since disappeared behind them as they accelerated down the runway.

Burney gently pulled his control yoke back and, moments later, they were skimming over the bare trees at the end of the airstrip. Frozen forest expanded for miles in every direction, not another clearing or building in sight. Individual trees meshed together into a grey-brown expanse as they gained altitude, the morning sun rising over the horizon with them. Burney banked his plane into a steady turn until the shining disc was at their backs and the Cardinal's shadow danced wistfully across the treetops. Every maneuver he made, every tug at the controls, was made with such a tender touch it was as if the bird really were the living, breathing animal that gave it its name. It was almost relaxing to watch the captain guide his plane through the sky, actually.

“How long until we get there?” Larissa asked over the steady hum of the engines, much louder now that they were no longer idling on the ground.

“It’s gonna be a couple days, unless you want to take shifts when it gets dark out,” Burney replied. “Between fuel stops it’s a good twenty or so hours. We’ll be setting down in Tulsa along the way so I usually stop there for the night on this route.”

He reached into a pocket on the cockpit wall next to him and produced a large folded-up piece of paper.

“Here,” he said as he handed it to her. It was a map of the U.S., with lines drawn in marker connecting various cities. She noticed two lines intersecting in the middle of New York state which, unlike the other connections, had no cities nearby at all. There were a few such unmarked spots on the map, actually. Several other lines converged on one city in the middle of the map — Tulsa, Oklahoma. Looks like he used this as the halfway point for a lot of his shipping jobs, or maybe a hub of some kind. A couple more lines converged on her destination: Santa Fe, New Mexico.

“Hey, by the way, what’s your name?” he asked as she studied the map.

“La—” …Larissa stopped herself. She realized now what a forgiving name they’d given her.

“…Lapis. Lapis Lazuli.”

“Oh, like the stone?”

“Yeah. Like the stone.”


	3. Green Light

**January 1, 1947  
** **Santa Fe, New Mexico  
Two  **days before arrival****

Peridot glanced around and furtively unfolded the scrap of paper again.

_No, this was definitely it._

On the heavily creased paper was a small map of the park. Someone had inked a blue circle around one of the benches. _“3:30 pm”,_ it was labeled.

She checked her watch for the hundredth time before looking around again. A cyclist passed by the bench, followed by a teenager walking a tiny dog — that is a dog, right? A beat cop strolled down the sidewalk by the street in his navy blue uniform, towards and then past the pathway into the park.

_3:32._

Out of the corner of her eye, Peridot noticed a tall, light-haired figure in a rolled-up long-sleeved shirt and sweatpants jogging down the sidewalk as well. She rounded the corner into the park and started heading her way.

As she approached, the shorter, and by comparison _much_ scrawnier figure waiting on the bench could better make out the jogger’s face. She had a strong-cut jaw — almost as strong as her intimidating forearms below her rolled-up sleeves — and an angular nose, and her light hair was tied back into a loose ponytail. She appeared like she might be in her late twenties or early thirties, although as fit as she looked, she could easily be older — it was hard to tell. Her flushed skin glistened with sweat, but as she slowed down in front of the bench, she somehow didn’t seem winded at all.

_Okay. Here we go._

“Don’t look at me. Keep your eyes forward,” she said in a low but conversational tone as she casually sat down next to her. She somehow kept a steady voice — relaxed, even — despite her weary appearance.

Peridot, meanwhile, was struggling to control a shaky breath. The first thing she noticed about this woman, aside from that she could probably snap her in half, was her flawless American accent. _Was she really…?_

“It sure is chilly today,” the jogger remarked before she could finish that thought.

“I– I’m used to it,” the other stammered quietly.

The jogger was looking around casually, as if she were surveying the park.

“Try again,” she said.

Peridot took another deep breath did something that resembled settling herself.

“I’m used to this where I come from,” she said. Her voice was finally leveling out.

The jogger rested an elbow over the back of the bench. “Cool down,” she advised. “Just two strangers talking about the weather."

She paused and looked around some more, just as casually as a moment ago, before continuing.

“I hope you didn’t wear your tie like that to the interview. How'd it go?”

Just for a moment, Peridot furrowed her eyebrows together and shot the woman next to her an annoyed look, but left the loose tie hanging from her collar as it was.

“It was fine. I start Monday,” she replied, finally matching the other’s conversational tone.

“Fine?” The jogger raised an eyebrow.

“I said fine and I meant fine,” Peridot said, slightly irritated. “The director is a different guy now and apparently a lot of people left the project after the war. But Bradbury had my file and said he’d be glad to have me back on board.”

“Bradbury’s the new guy.”

“Yeah.”

The two went silent as they watched another pair of runners pass by. They waited until they were out of earshot before speaking again.

“Did he ask about your… emotional state?” the jogger asked.

“I told him I was fine,” Peridot said with a frown. “Don’t worry about it.”

“You really ought to find a better word than ‘fine’ for when you don’t want people to worry about it, Parker.”

“Parker” sighed. “Please, just call me Peridot, okay? Parker is—”

“A woman in a blue coat will show up at your front door the day after tomorrow,” the jogger continued, talking right past Peridot’s protest. She subtly pulled something out of her pocket and placed it by the other’s hand on the bench. “Invite her inside as if you know her. She’ll be your partner from now on.”

“My partner? What kind of—”

“Stay here for a few minutes after I leave,” the jogger interrupted again, already standing up. “She’ll explain everything in person. See you around, Parker.”

"Perido—"

She sighed. Peridot watched her contact run off, continuing along the path she came from. With a long sigh, she wrapped her fingers around the piece of paper sitting by her hand.

_What have I gotten myself into?_


	4. An Old Acquaintance

**January 3, 1947  
** **Santa Fe, New Mexico  
Day Zero: Arrival**

“Santa Fe Approach, Douglas Three Eight Zero Two Baker, five miles northeast, inbound for landing with information Queen.”

Captain Burney lowered the radio handset from his lips and turned to Lapis in the copilot’s seat.

“We’re almost there,” he said. “Traffic is gonna be pretty light at this hour so we should just be a few more minutes.”

 _“Douglas Three Eight Zero Two Baker, Santa Fe Approach, enter right downwind, runway zero two, report entering right downwind,”_ the radio crackled.

 “Zero Two Baker will report entering downwind, zero two,” Burney confirmed, and hung the handset back on the dashboard.

“What’d I tell ya? We’ll be on the ground in no time,” he said. Lapis couldn’t say she understood what they were saying to each other; this protocol wasn’t completely different from what she had used, but how was Burney supposed to know which direction was downwind, and why did it even matter? He’d done this half a dozen times at half a dozen airports over the past couple days with varying amounts of jargon, but she never bothered asking for a translation; a silent thumbs up was generally easier. She offered the silent thumbs up and continued staring into the black void out the window.

Over the course of their journey, the ground had gradually grown flatter and flatter, and trees had given way to grass and grass to vast expanses of orange dirt. It hadn’t made for very interesting sightseeing, so the mountains that had just started to crop up to the west before the sun sank below them were a refreshing change. Incredibly, Burney claimed some of these mountains were covered in snow this time of year, despite the twinkling urban desert just below them now. The city was nestled in a valley according to the map he’d given her yesterday, so there would be plenty of time to see for herself later.

Burney picked up the radio again.

“Santa Fe Approach, Zero Two Baker, right downwind, zero two.”

 _“Douglas Zero Two Baker, cleared to land,”_ the radio replied.

Lapis sighed in relief. She’d had enough of riding sidecar in other people’s airplanes for one week.

“Cleared to land, Zero Two Baker,” the pilot confirmed, and hung the handset up again. As he was chattering with traffic control, Burney had been lining his plane up with the rows of white lights marking one of several crossing runways, which were slowly growing as they approached. He pulled back on the throttle and, as the engines dropped their loud droning to a softer hum, put the Cardinal into a gentle descent with a nudge to the control yoke. Soon, they were gliding over the tarmac and Burney connected another one of his smooth trademark touchdowns — for an army cargo plane, he sure knew how to handle it with some grace.

Radio in hand once again, he resumed his negotiations with traffic control for a parking spot, but Lapis wasn’t listening anymore. She was just anxious to get her legs stretched out on terra firma and keep them there.

Eventually, they taxied their way to a space among several other planes lined up in a row. Many of them, as was the case in most of the other airports they’d stopped at along the way, looked just like the Cardinal, paintjob and liveries aside. It turned out the civilian version of this plane was pretty common — passenger terminals in particular were loaded with them, with names like “Pan Am” and “American Airlines” painted over a polished metal finish.

Burney started shutting down the plane, but Lapis was already untying her gear by the time the engines cut off. As the two of them opened the double doors in the back and unfolded the ladder, a pair of headlights pulled up alongside the plane. Lapis dropped the softer of her two bags to the ground and made her way down the ladder carrying the other. When she turned around to pick it up, her heart stopped.

_Oh, no._

Standing before her, in the open driver’s door on the other side of an off-white sedan, was a husky, intimidatingly tall figure with light hair and a sharp, angled nose.

_Дерьмо._

“Lapis, so glad you could make it!” the woman called as she made her way around the car. Her features were cast in striking shadows as she stepped past the headlights: she wore slacks and a blazer, but her sturdy build underneath was plain to see all the same. Her voice trod the line between warm and sarcastic, her face somewhere between dead and some tired mockery of welcoming. “Let me help you with your things!”

“I can get them,” Lapis said as she picked up the bag she’d dropped on the ground. She she said the words with the exact same tone she’d used for them with Burney back in New York — but this time, it was deliberate.

The taller woman was standing right in front of her now — right on top of her, even — peering down with eyes cast in shadow, the only light nearby coming from the car to her back.

“Right,” she said in a low tone, hands now on her hips to complete the imposing frame. "By all means, pardon me — of course you can get them."

Lapis let out a frustrated sigh.

"Shut up, Jasper," she muttered, pushing the heavier of the two bags into her good old friend's chest as she brushed past.

“Hmph,” Jasper smirked, shouldering the soft suitcase with ease. “Alright, tough guy.”

———————————————————————————

  
It was a smooth ride over the tarmac as they passed by rows of dormant airplanes, their crews turned in for the night. A single silver airliner hummed in the distance as it made its way towards its assigned runway, glistening in the taxi lights guiding the way from below.

“Listen up, Lomidze, because you’re only gonna hear this once,” Jasper scowled.

“It’s… Lazuli,” Lapis tried to correct. “Lapis Lazu—”

“Not right now you’re not,” Jasper interrupted tersely. “For the next thirty seconds, you’re still that Nowhere, Georgia nobody that I’ve got to babysit. So here’s the deal, _Larissa._ ”

She pulled off the tarmac past the humble Pueblo-style control tower, which evidently doubled as the airport ticket center judging by some signs cast dimly in the light emanating from inside. The darkened road in front began to gently curve around the airport’s perimeter.

“I’m your handler. I’m not your friend,” she continued. “I know what you did. Read your file _before_ you kissed enough ass to crawl out of your cell. I know what you _really_ are.”

Lapis decided it wasn’t the time to protest. After another bend, a well-lit intersection came into view a good half mile down the road. Traffic was relatively sparse, but even from here Lapis could make out cars and trucks in just about every color imaginable passing by to and fro, illuminated by each other’s headlights. Every now and then one would turn into the airport and eventually pass by their sedan.

“Your capacity to lie your way out of trouble speaks for itself, but let’s get one thing straight. I own you. You fuck up even _once—_ ” Lapis abruptly found a raised finger barely an inch off her nose. “Your ass is back in Moscow before you finish your next breath. I’m sure you can fill in the rest. Understand?”

Lapis turned away from Jasper's hand in her face and let her eyes drift out the window. “Got it, Jasper,” she said. _Son of a bitch._

“Okay,” her handler replied, her tone somewhat de-escalated. “Glovebox, there’s a folder and some cash.”

Lapis opened the compartment in the dashboard in front of her and found a slightly scuffed leather wallet and a manila folder. Their car slipped into the stream of traffic at the intersection with a right turn, and the occasional squat building began to pop up on either side.

“Santa Fe starter kit,” Jasper said as Lapis opened the folder. “Stores, government offices, landmarks. Places everyone who lives here knows. Addresses, phone numbers. Where to go around here to get what you need and how to get it. All the shit I wish they told me when they sent me to this backwards country during the war.”

Lapis paused flipping through an address book in the light of passing street lamps and looked up at her new handler in surprise.

“During the war? I thought you were on—”

“Not your concern, Lazuli,” Jasper cut her off. “Far as you know, I’ve lived here my entire freedom-loving life, just like you.”

The irony of this statement was not lost on Lapis given her present situation, but she elected not to comment on it and returned to the address book. It was sectioned by category, with street addresses and phone numbers for everything from barbecue joints and hardware stores to the police station and city hall. Hopefully run-ins with the latter would be minimal.

“My number’s not in there. You know it?” Jasper said.

Sure enough, the “People” section towards the back of the book was empty, save for one entry for her new partner she had yet to actually meet.

“Yeah, I know it,” Lapis affirmed.

“Good, don’t write it down. Remember to always use a payphone for business calls, like that one over there,” Jasper said. Lapis looked up and followed her pointing finger out the windshield towards a public phone standing out front of another squat Pueblo-style building. Actually, there were a lot of Pueblo-style buildings, scattered among older-looking brick ones, most of them not taller than two stories. Sometime between digging into the address book and Jasper announcing the presence of a payphone, they had passed into a bustling downtown Santa Fe evening. Right away she noticed shops, cantinas, drugstores and, most of all, billboards and signs… _everywhere._ Ads for Budweiser, Lucky Strike, and “Refreshing Coca-Cola, in a bottle or on the tap” seemed to fill every available surface, and practically every window was lit up with neon signs.

 _Why would anyone want to cover up their city with all this… junk?_ It was gaudy at the least, although she stopped short of tragic; there didn’t exactly seem to be any historic architecture on the line around here.

Jasper brought the car to a stop at an intersection to let a group of pedestrians cross — a family, it seemed like, and the mother was wearing, nearly to Lapis’ horror, what she could only describe as the most opulently... _excessive_ white fur coat she could possibly imagine. She winced.

“Do all the women here dress like that?” she asked in an uneasy tone.

“Only the ones with more money than taste,” Jasper remarked dryly, stepping on the gas again as the family passed by. “Which is most of them.”

Just then, a blur of headlights tore around the corner a block down on their right and came to a swerving halt as Jasper pulled into the intersection, dodging slamming into Lapis’ side of the car by inches. Lapis jumped in terror, but Jasper merely sighed without so much as a flinch.

“Also, the people here drive like shit,” she said wearily.

She motioned to a “Handy Tom’s” passing by outside Lapis’ window on the other side of the intersection.

“Skip the hardware store if you need tools for the mission,” she said. “That Burney guy brings us our supplies. Run it by me in advance and I can arrange for something to be sent in so it can’t be tied to you if you manage to lose it.”

Before long they had left downtown and Jasper drove the car into a suburban area. One-story homes surrounded by hibernating grass lawns and off-season flowerbeds lined the streets. A well-dressed couple in eveningwear stepped into a sedan parked in their driveway, and a dog in the opposite front yard barked at their car as they passed. Lapis was in the land of the fabled American middle class. For the first time, it finally sunk in just how far from home she was — that this really is, in fact, in the U.S.A. _The_ U.S.A. The feeling was almost surreal.

“Whatever they told you back home, this is how it’s gonna work with me,” Jasper said, her tone now once again in her special brand of serious. “They’ll tell me what they want. I’ll tell you what they want. You and the scientist will get what they want, and then you’ll give it to me. With me so far?”

Lapis nodded. She was only partly listening — her brain was suddenly in a daze as she soaked in her surroundings — but this wasn’t really news either way.

“You will give all your reports directly to me, in person. The safehouse is in the folder — I suggest you find it tomorrow and burn the info. Don’t write down anything you don’t want read.”

Jasper pulled the car to a stop in front of one of the houses.

“We’re here,” she said, somewhat unceremoniously. Lapis snapped to and looked out her window. The home before her looked ordinary — just like many of the others they had passed so far, it was a brick-built, single story affair with what she assumed was supposed to be a modest (although this one somewhat unkempt) lawn. A concrete driveway and adjoining brick path lead to matching white front and garage doors. A single window glowed with electric light.

She suddenly felt a sinking nervousness in her chest. Lapis had faced down pilots trying to kill her in the skies over her homeland and slipped right through enemy kampfgruppen in the cover of night, but this was something different altogether. And she wasn’t in her homeland anymore.

Jasper reached a single burly arm into the back seat of the car and, a moment later, Lapis found both of her bags abruptly dropped onto her lap.

“Go get acquainted, lovebirds.”


	5. Identity Papers

**August 25, 1946  
** **Moscow, Soviet Union  
Five months before arrival**

“Lapis… Lazuli?” Larissa frowned. She didn’t know much about American names, but this sounded unusual.

“Maiden name, yes. Died in California in 1931. Long history in the family, apparently,” Colonel Budayev said, in English, from his leather chair behind his desk. The heavy-built colonel was flanked by a crimson and gold flag on one side, a hanging portrait of a balding man with neatly trimmed mustache and goatee on the other. His accent was thick, although she couldn’t say hers was much better at this point. “Your new beloved is named for a stone, too. ‘A match made in heaven,’ as the Americans say — would you not agree?”

That must be the point, she guessed. Gross lovey-dovey stuff would help sell the cover.

He produced a folder from a drawer and laid it on his desk.

“This is you. Papers, documents, history. Learn every single detail.”

As Larissa picked the folder up, Budayev reached inside the drawer again and handed her another.

“This is the scientist. Parker. Know her better than you know yourself.”

Larissa — or, “Lapis”, now, as the case seemed to be — opened up the latter file. Pinned to the top with a paperclip was a black and white photograph of a “Frances Peridot Parker.” She frowned. The figure in the photo looked scrawny, disheveled — loose tie, rumpled shirt, looked like she had just fallen out of bed — but clearly nowhere near a bed. No, the background showed her stepping out of a store, arms full of... groceries? No… _American candy bars?_ Larissa had never even had a candy bar.

Maybe it was just a one-off unflattering photo. Must be that, for sure. Certainly nobody really walks around like that, not even in America. She — and Lapis — just really like candy bars, that’s all.

“You will have your first ‘date’ with your language instructor the day after tomorrow to practice your role,” the colonel said. “You are no longer Sergeant Major Larissa Lomidze, agent. You are Lapis Lazuli of Los Angeles, California. You like Bing Crosby, worked in an American airplane factory during the war. You will not tell the scientist anything about your past life here, lest she mention it to someone. Your name, your country, your favorite Georgian dish. You will not tell _anybody_ about these things, no matter how much you think you can trust them. You will not speak a _single_ word of Russian, or Georgian, or any other language that is not English lest somebody overhear. And agent,”

He paused. Folded his hands together on his desk. Tilted his head to one side, all of which only served to amplify his blue, piercing gaze. “If the scientist fails, there will be no more second chances.”

Lapis swallowed.

“I understand, Colonel Budayev, sir.”

“Good.” He motioned to the folders she didn’t realize she was clutching so tightly to her chest until now. “Perhaps you should start studying, Lapis Lazuli Parker.”


End file.
